Thread: Immigrant's life makes case for compromise

I'm beginning to find out we have a sanctuary city here. Can't trust much. Does this story make any sense to anyone. How can Homeland Security make laws? I'm not saying it couldn't happen since Bush makes his own laws. Wouldn't this guy be in the Amnesty of 86?

Thursday, April 13, 2006

Bob Hill
Immigrant's life makes case for compromise

Ben Ruiz came to this country as a 9-year-old more than 50 years ago by crossing the Rio Grande River near Weslaco, Texas, with his family in a canoe.

His father had to leave their Mexico City home because he was receiving death threats for expressing his opinions.

Ben Ruiz and his family lived in ghettos all over the United States. At 17 he enlisted for a two-year stint in the Marines. He took classes in art design in Houston, Los Angeles and Chicago, and for a time was an English major at New York University.

When he came to Louisville with his wife, Sonia, and their three children, he worked at Brown Forman Corp., Henry Vogt Machine and General Electric. In 1984 he joined a graphic design studio that his wife, Sonia, started in their basement.

The result of their 22-year collective effort is now Adhawks Advertising & Public Relations Inc., a downtown Louisville company that employs 11 people -- including their three children -- and has Toyota among its clients.

Its walls are lined with awards the company has won, and thank yous from the dozens of local, state and national events and groups to which the Ruiz family has contributed. Those include Maryhurst, the Louisville Science Center, Brain Injury Association of Kentucky, Hispanic Business Association, Louisville Urban League, Corn Island Story Telling Festival, Louisville Youth Choir, Junior Achievement, The Bunbury Theatre and Louisville Diversified Services.

Yet because of changes in immigration laws as directed by Homeland Security provisions, Ruiz cannot now vote, drive a car in Louisville or be eligible to receive the Social Security benefits for which he has always paid taxes.

"I'm in that category where I have fallen through the cracks," said Ruiz, 64.

Added complication
It's a little more complicated than that. His father had been born in the United States, so when he led his family here -- and a canoe was the best and least expensive option at the time -- the four Ruiz children were automatically considered "foreign-born American citizens."

That "automatic" category, Ruiz said, was erased under new Homeland Security provisions. Before voting -- or receiving Social Security -- he now needs an N600 – a "derivative" birth certificate required of foreign-born Americans. Renewing his Kentucky driver's license was blocked until the N600 was issued.

The process required Ruiz to search for his father's 1905 birth records in El Paso. He's been getting help from the office of U.S. Rep. Ann Northup, R-3rd District, and expects he will soon be granted an interview that will lead to the N600 certificate; his family will no longer have to drive him to work at an ad agency billing about $1.5 million annually.

The experience has made Ruiz even more committed to help other less-connected Hispanics protest provisions of a congressional immigration bill that could make about 12 million undocumented immigrants -- which at this point includes Ruiz -- criminals.

He has marched, helped with pamphlets, developed a Web site (kccir.org), but does not favor blanket amnesty. He wishes only for a path to residency, a structured citizenship plan that would fit the millions of Mexicans who have been here many years -- while finding ways to deal with more recent illegal immigrants who would be returned to Mexico and apply to come back.

He understands the sheer impossibility of identifying, arresting and returning to Mexico millions of people who would only try to come back to the United States. He knows the work ethic of his people, their entrepreneurship, their willingness to give back. He's lived it.

"When I give talks," he said. " I tell people we are the biggest Hispanic ad agency in Kentucky. Of course, we are the only Hispanic ad agency in Kentucky."

http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/...TS05/604130397

Something not right with this story. I don't know how to answer your question but if he has been here over 50 yrs why wasn't he granted amnesty in 1986?

That's what I'm thinking. Also, if his father is a legal citizen, why is he not considered a legal citizen also. Either they have left out something, or we are just not connecting the dots, I don't know.